Thursday, March 31, 2011

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to fly a kite? Not just any kite but a really nice kite while you're standing on the edge of a mountain. Or a clff. Or something rather dastardly and dangerous - although dastardly probably isn't the right adjective in this situation - that's equivolent to standing on the edge of a cliff and flying a kite off the edge.

I think it would be fun. I can picture just standing out in the wild and letting the windo blow stuff everywhere, not a care in the world behind the kite. There are eagles circling the area, so there must be a large river or lake below the cliff. And probably some sharp rocks. The sky is blue, the wind is clean, the treas and grass are greener and than green and it's just beautiful.

And then I fall off the cliff. That's usually what happens . Somethinggrabs the kite and yanks and I'm tumbling off the edge of the liff and falling, falling, faliling until the water breaks my fall.

I die.

Of course, dying in this world isn't exactly dying in our world. You se e, what happens when you die is you get woken up and tranversed back into your won body, some several hours ago. The thing is, you have no access yto your previous self so its just a continual cycle of falling off the edge of the cliff until there's about three thousand "Yous" in your mind and then you explode.

And you aren't transferred. That's usually how that story ends. Unless the leopard shows up and starts playing with me. There's a random leopard in a lot of my little fantasizes and daydreams. I've taken to calling him Stripes. Even if he is a leopard.

I like leopards. They're almost as good as turtles. I was talking to someone before homeroom the other day and was explaining my propensity to be talking about something completely normal and then end up discussing the positive aspects of turtles and other random things. Of course, mentioning that fact made me talk about how amazing turtles were and then somehow I ended up talking about my toes and how they grew over each other in weird ways. Yeah. I'm the school weirdo.

Although, not really. There's this one guy, Max, who really holds that title. Jumping out the window really does guarantee you a position of infamous notability. Jumping back in through the window guarantees you a position of strange. And then, after a few days, jumping out the window again and running away guarantees that everyone in the school knows your name within two days. Especially when the police are called in to help. Max. You're really a special person.

I really like the exchange between Dash and Elasticgirl in The Incredibles about how if everyone special that makes no one special. The Incredibles is a good movie. It's a Pixar one. And Pixar is amazing. There full length stories... their shorts... I like Pixar.

Okay. >.< I wrote that with my eyes closed and I'm not changing anything. Enjoy your glimpse as to how my mind works when I'm way past the emotional state of caring.

I find it absolutely amazing how fascinated I can be with people when I really dislike engaging in past-times with a majority of the people I have encountered over the course of my life. I've never really had that large of a strong social circle; as my main group of friends as a homeschooler was spread out across the district and we only saw each other once a week - if that. At school, I see groups of people that see each other everyday and the dynamics are completely and totally different.

School always seems so quick and fleeting to me, as if holding a two minute conversation with one person everyday makes them your friend. It doesn't feel like there's the same amount of time and energy poured into the friendships, even if I know those friendships are very strong and lasting and all that stuff.

My Chinese class is the most fascinating class, really, because we have a strong cast of representatives from all four classes. There's three social groups, really, Megan's group, Hannah's group, and then the others and me. Megan and Sara are the most notable Juniors, and they tend to treat the Freshmen, especially Wyatt, like a little kid and their class baby or little sibling or whatever. The Seniors, Adriana, Annie - they're all seem a lot more demure than the Juniors, but I think that's just due to personality; however, those Seniors tend to be in the group pretty much led by Megan. The Sophomores are the most diverse group, as Ari receives almost the same treatment of the Freshman, Jake and Erin acts like a Juniors. That's the major people in that one group.

The other two social groups in Chinese are the loners: Cole, Zack, Erik, Raphael, Philip and me. And then there's Hannah's group which consists entirely of the girls who aren't in Megan's group. Elizabeth, Carrine, and Sarah. And I've seen Hannah, Elizabeth and Carrine together in the halls. Actually, if you take out Sarah and insert me, that group spans all four years, so it's probably the strangest one in the class.

What is so incredibly fascinating about the people in Chinese is that we are the only ones learning this language. There's twenty-something people in this class. And in the hallways, we'll have greeting and goodbye kind of conversations; always in Chinese of course. We are twenty-odd oddities in the school and we reach out the people who are taking the same language. It's not so true for the other Erin or Megan, who are taking two languages. It's just... strange. I haven't quiet figured out how Chinese works.

It's also a foreign language. Which means we are required to talk. Everyone knows that I have the largest family in the class, with Zack having the next largest. Everyone knows some of the petty squabbles that Wyatt and Grace - brothers - indulge in. It's hysterical how well you get to know some people when you're really not learning anything at all about them. People I'd never really hold a conversation with in a million years and I know how many siblings they have, their relationship status, their birthday. Etc. Etc. Etc. I still find it strange.

In class today, Ms. Jiang gave us 35 of the 100 most commonly used characters. It was the first pop quiz of the year. We then had to translate those 35 characters into both pinyin and English. I loved the exercise, even if I got about nine wrong. To put this in prospective, Kristina got 31.5 points, and the whole class thought that was totally impossible. The class average was probably about a 12... Seriously, I love stuff like that. It's a challenge. It's fun. It's engaging.

TWENTY-FOUR DAYS UNTIL THE TWENTY-THIRD OF APRIL! I just saw a trailer for the sixth season of Doctor Who. And I know there's a lot of stuff wrong with that show and everything, but still... I really love Doctor Who and I can't wait to see what they've pulled together for this next season. YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!

-stops screaming-

I really don't think I can wait that long. I really, really don't. And I think I'm just posting it because I don't feel like I have anything worthwhile to say right now. Besides for the fact that gym is evil, science teachers always carry a dictionary, and math teachers don't know how to spell. But I've made those points numerous amounts of time and you don't need to here them again.

Monday, March 28, 2011

What is so special about a sock monkey, that it throws half the people i interact with so off kilter they have trouble thinking straight? The reactions were many and varied, and some of the most interesting ones came from people who I didn't know. Most of the strangest conversations happened with the people i did know. I'm using substitute names... so you don't really need to know the people.

In social studies, Rick looked at me, looked at the monkey, shook his head and said, "I'm not going to ask." He has - lucky him - been subject to one of my rants about people who ask me to explain why i do something. Amelia just rolled her eyes and asked what the monkey's name was. My teacher for that class just laughed and went off to control some of the out-of-control people in that class.

In Chinese, he got some odd looks, but then Karen drew a picture of the Doctor (10th) and Jack Harkness arguing about bananas. The Doctor had just shot Jack with a banana and Jack was dying. It was hysterical. Brighton didn't seem to think it was that funny. He ate the banana. And he still refuses to like apples. Siiiigh.

In study hall, i got Brighton out of backpack and set up him on the desks while I was reading. My conversation with Marc was like "What's that?" "A sock monkey." "What's a sock monkey?" "This." "Why do you have it?" "International shipping project." "What?" And then the teacher told Marc to be quiet. Later, the teacher decided that Brighton was a baboon, but of course, she had trouble coming up with the right word for baboon because she's a native Spanish speaker and everything. I think that she and i decided that sock monkeys were their own breed of animals.

Nothing special happened in lunch, but in the cafeteria, i made some paper earmuffs and stuck them over Brighton's ears when he started complaining about the language. Yes. We had mental conversations throughout the day. It was engaging. And very weird, but still fun. Anyway, so throughout lunch, Brighton wore earmuffs. Jen doesn't like monkeys. She thought Brighton was a weirdo. He probably is. Leaving the cafeteria, some random guy came up to me and asked why i had a monkey. I said it was an international shipping project. He snorted.

In English, Ms. Tworek just smirked. She's got a great smirk. And... while we're on the topic of English, I'd like to mention that i really dislike watching Sir Patrick Stewart in Shakespeare. I mean, i know he's done a ton of it, but it feels so wrong! I spent all of this English period wincing and picturing David Tennant reciting Hamlet's to-be-or-not-to-be soliloquy while wearing an orange t-shirt. >.< I don't like modernized Shakespeare; especially ones with Patrick Stewart.

Nothing much happened in engineering or math either, but Seth made a comment to the effect that my nerd ranking went up about two points. I thing pointed out that he was already incredibly familiar with parametric constraints, so he was probably higher up on the geek ladder. He disagreed. Of course, this ended up with Josh, Seth and i leading the whole class period in a discussion as to who was geekiest. The end result was Seth and i about equal with Josh a few rungs below us, Beth a few rungs below him and then Matt a few rungs below her. We didn't continue to dish out the geekiness. And math was math... which meant staring at the wall for close to forty-three minutes straight. Okay, it's not that bad.

Walking to the bus, a few people commented about how random it was, or how cute it was, or -beep- THERE'S A MONKEY IN HER BACKPACK. It made me laugh. A lot. Anyway, yes. That's pretty much what happens when you take a sock monkey to school.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Seussical is rather infectious. It just is. And it's put me in a rather weird mood right now, so I'm going to put on my Seussical cap and go bonkers for a few minutes.

The only time I ever tried to write like Seuss was at Cedarbrook when Annabeth and I took control of the groups in our cabin and wrote a couple stanzas about a baker. That's pretty much all I remember, but I think the baker's name started with a 'b,' there was a massive problem with his bakery, and the camp director stood there and listened to us read the poem out loud and never got the Look on her face. The Look is terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. Wally's Look is not a pleasant thing to get caught under.

I've loved Seuss for ages...

One of my lunch groups says, "Who'd want to go see Seussical? It's about Seuss! It's a children's story!" He does happen to be the most immature of the lot of us. I quoted CS Lewis in response to him, "If a story cannot be enjoyed by adults, it should not be read by children." Anyway, I hate it when people see Seuss as only silly.

Yes, he is hysterical and funny and gifted and talented, but there's so much more behind him, and that's why I think Seussical the Musical is so amazing because it captures the whole wonderment and ideas behind To Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street. Or whatever the title of that book was; I can never really remember. I think it's fascinating that Seuss weaves so much romanticism and joy into the words of just a few childrens' rhymes.

While I can't recite it from memory, my favorite tonguetwister remains the one about the creatures in the puddles with paddles in a bottle filled with water who were having a war and whatever and whenever and blahblahblah -insert the stuff that makes Seuss a genius-.

Seuss also has the second most epic pen-name from among the books I've read. Lemony Snicket gets the first spot, followed by Seuss and then Twain. If there's anyone else, then I don't know it's a pen name. =P

Saturday, March 26, 2011

One of my favorite little childrens' books is If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I've only read that book about ten different times and I know it almost as well as I know Green Eggs and Ham and that's saying something.

Anyway, I was outside today and I placed Brighton the Sock Monkey down on the ground. Hobbes, our cat, was about two yards away at this time. He flipped out - the cat, not the monkey, that is. I mean, his tail got so big and he started stalking this inanimate monkey. It was hysterical. I got pictures of it too... Brighton was not happy with me. He kept complaining that he was being attacked by a tiger.

Whoops-e-dee.

Although, I suppose this begs the questions of what happens when you give OYANers a monkey. We-e-ell. We've kind of already discovered that with Brighton the Monkey Mascot. He's a cool idea, yes, and it's great being able to ship him around and everything, but I think he's slightly overrated. Right now, he's downstairs so he can't get offended. Maybe it's Drew's conditioning.

I was a little shocked today when I assembled all the stuffed animals in the house. Bob has moved his over to Mom's house, but there were only three monkeys. I have Drew's entire collection, minus Bunny, and he only had one stuffed monkey, the sloth. I had the other two. I mean, Drew was practically obsessed with monkeys for the longest of time and we only had three stuffed monkeys! It astounded me.

Hobbes does not like Brighton. Which I think is hysterical. Sock monkeys are great. I love sock monkeys. They're fun and amazing and epic and etc. etc. etc. For some really random reason, I feel like watching Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Anyway, sock monkeys are just... very OYANish and comfortable and fun and engaging and I'm sounding really corny right now. I'm trying to get Brighton to like apples. They are a New York staple, after all. He doesn't sound convinced.

Friday, March 25, 2011

I really should be mad at Sandy right now. But I'm not, really... It's just she put an idea into my head and I haven't been able to get rid of that idea all day! And no one seemed to share my curiosity in why we capitalize 'i'. I is a pronoun, just like he or she or you or they, but it is not grammatically correct to capitalize any of those. Just the i. Why?!

I did some research into the etymology of the word 'i'. Not much, but enough to discover than in old English, the word was 'ich' or 'ic' or some other version of those couple of letters. As the language developed, the consonants were dropped and it became simply i. And for a little while, it wasn't capitalized. However, a couple years after the one letter became standard, people started to capitalize it so it would stand out as a single word and not get lost within a handwritten sentence or whatever.

Okay, ich get that, but if that's the case, why not capitalize 'a'? Because that's a single letter word; doesn't it have to stand out? This then drags the discussion out of grammar and into how people view the world and themselves. Ich could rant forever about how our country's modern world view has placed so much importance on the individual, on the "self." Really, that's the case. Our world is so centered on self-importance we lose track of others.

One example for that is how we've deteriorated in the aspect of who to put first. The general rule is, when listing a group of people, always put yourself last. Like, "Mary, Peggy-Sue, Dave and I went to the grocery store." Ich'm guilty of this as well, but I lot of people will say things like, "Me, Mary, Peggy-Sue and Dave went to the grocery store." If you ignore the improper use of me - a really annoying topic that ich'm not going to address here - that second sentence is still incorrect. It's placing yourself in front of other people; making yourself better. And almost everyone ich know does it.

Ich would like to point out that most of the romantic languages don't capitalize their version of 'i'. Or, at least, that's what a really quick search showed up. Ich know Chinese doesn't. =P. Another very interesting aspect is the capitalization of God. And this capitalization ich very much agree with because it raises Him above us; but if anything, the rule for honoring God and his name has fallen by the wayside while the rules about 'i' have only become more important.

This is one of those times where ich really hate society. And ich really doesn't understand why we should capitalize 'i', when we don't capitalize the other pronouns of the same tense and everything. So ich think ich'm going to start a rebellion; kinda of. In this blog posts, in emails, everywhere ich can without being degraded, ich'm going to try and use ich. Because why should we place ourselves above other people? Why should the self, the individual be the best?

Thursday, March 24, 2011

I seem to be writing a great deal of poems lately... I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Anyway, this is one I was working on tonight and I'm not sure where to head with it. Should I go into more detail about the routine I'm stuck in to develop the story more? Should I completely stop writing it because it's awful? Should I just grumble about how stiffling routines are? I'm not sure, so I would be interested in our opinion as to which direction I should take this poem and any advice you might have as to making the poem better. The poem... is very unfinished, because I'm stuck...

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Okay. I'm not a pun person. Seriously, I don't really like them. I think most of them are over used and often stupid. I barely react to puns, even if they're good, just because I've been conditioned against them. A good outcome of that is most people stop trying to get me to laugh with puns after a few attempts. It takes a really good pun to make me laugh.

And it takes a really, really, really bad pun to made me cry with laughter and feel sorry for the guys who spent so much time trying to figure that pun out. I'm mean, really bad. Bad times ten with a pinch of horrible, a handful of horrific and a tablespoon of terrible. ((Avoid alterations, always =P))

It's like... I have no words to describe how awful this is. It's like... fingernails on chalk bored horrific. Like the "what's brown and sticky?" "a stick" joke and the "wanna hear a dirty joke?" "the white horse fell in the mud" horrific. And it's... be warned... I did not write this. I did not laugh at this. I just felt sorry for whomever created it.

"Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (here it comes!) a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis."

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

I really, really, really hate paper cuts. Because it hurts whenever I hit t, r, g, f, b, and v. And I just went and pressed each and everyone of those letters. Oh, and c. I forgot c.

I've had this paper cut since eight in the morning and it's really really really annoying because I haven't been able to work on Spiderweb Whatjamacalits for any length of time because my finger starts blistering with pain. It's really annoying.

But then I think I'm getting repetitive.

I still hate paper cuts.

Especially if you lick an envelope and you get it a paper cut on your tongue. That's like, almost as bad as a kankersore. I recently had a kankersore right in the front of my bottom lip and it was really strange because it rolled over my teeth in weird ways when I talked and it hurt if I frowned or smiled and it was really awful. It lasted for about three days. But this paper cut is so annoying. It's not that I can't handle the pain, it's just a nusiance.

Sigh. It's the really annoying pains that bug me. I'm fine if it's an actual pain but something that's small and barely noticeable, that's the worst. Like an itch in my throat or a slight throb behind the eyes or a stuffy nose. I only notice headaches now if they're really bad. But this paper cut... is... AH!

In homeroom, I worked on a dialogue that a partner and I have to present in Chinese. In the dialogue, I want to go get ice cream, but my partner doesn't understand why we should go get ice cream because it's snowing. It's pretty epic. Besides for the fact that I've got a massive translating job to do. Which is what I should be doing... instead of this. Actually, I haven't done any of my homework, so... yeah...

And then in Global, Hannah was being incredibly annoying and she kept trying to get me flustered and then apologizing and it was really annoying. During our discussions, I asked our teacher who her favorite president was. My dad is so going to love this... =P She replied Lincoln (he's, like, everybody's favorite, I don't get that) FDR, Lyndon B. Johnson and Carter. I laughed. She asked why I laughed. I told her I was hearing the anti-Carter rant that I got every time his name came up. (C'mon Dad, don't disappoint). And then Rishi and I had a discussion after class about taxation without representation and no one understood what we were talking about. Which was weird. Because we weren't being that obfuscating.

PE was pretty normal. For PE at least. Except for the fact that my engineering teacher was there for about fifteen minutes, talking to one of the two gym teachers. It was like... weird. He kept watching us.

Science was science. Nothing to report really. Except for the fact that my science teacher spells "within" as two words. That's really annoying. I don't like that.

We're reading Macbeth. It's Shakespeare, I get that. But we're reading it aloud, without having any previous knowledge of the play. No one can get through three lines without stumbling or misspronouncing something. Me included. Our teacher asked us who we thought was a stronger character, Macbeth or Lady Macbeth. Out of 25, 5 said Macbeth, including me. Our teacher asked us who we thought was going to kill King Duncan. I and two others said Macbeth. Everyone else thinks Lady Macbeth is going to do it.

In IED, Satjiv and Jonah continued to talk about Lewis Carroll. It was a conversation we started yesterday when Satjiv was inputting Jabberwocky into his calculator and Jonah said it wasn't normal for people to know Jabberwocky off the top of their heads. I started reciting the poem. He rolled his eyes. Seriously, I love that class. It's great. And we're assembling our pieces, so it actually looks like we have a little model engine now and it's epic.

And in math, we had a test that took me almost the entire period! I only had seven minutes of waiting around instead of the usually twenty or fifteen. It was a fun test. I think that I've gotten full credit for it, but I'm not. Usually if I'm really confident about all my answers, I'll get about two questions wrong. So, this state of mind is okay. I think I messed one of them up, but... yeah...

And then on the way to the bus, there was a police man walking through the hallways and it felt like he was following me. It was unnerving. Especially when he turned down the B-wing right after I did. Creepy. Really creepy.

And I really, really want to go write right now but I've got homework. Siiiiigh...

I can do the -stans now! Not that I know all of them, as I still can't say the Taij-something-stan or the smaller K-something-stan, but I know which countries they are. I just need the capitals now. Hm... And then I've got to remember the Az-something-jan country that sandwiches Armenia and is below Georgia. Really. I've been seeing this map in my head all day. It's nightmarish.

Monday, March 21, 2011

There are many, many reasons why I enjoy that television show. But here are a small amount of some of the best quotes from the series. I have tried to include one that captures the epicness of all the best characters... And frankly, I'm using this as a copout because I'm so brain dead I couldn't give you more than a couple good reasons. Siiiigh. Sorry. Enjoy the quotes and wake me in the morning (or don't, let me sleep and forever be my friend):

""There comes a time when you look into the mirror and realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. Then you accept it, or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking into mirrors." ~ Londo

"It's all so brief, isn't it? Typical human lifespan is almost a hundred years, but it's barely a second compared to what's out there. It wouldn't be so bad if life didn't take so long to figure out. Seems you just start to get it right and then .. it's over."
"Doesn't matter. If we lived two hundred years, we'd still be human.We'd still make the same mistakes."
"You're a pessimist."
"I am Russian, Doctor. We understand these things." ~ Ivanova and Franklin

"We do not have cats on Minbar, we have gogs."
"Gogs?"
"Gogs. Such creatures are an attempt by the universe to make sure that we never take ourselves too seriously." ~ Delenn and Sheridan

"And according to one of our units on the border of Centauri space, they've continued massing their fleet. We don't know why. Maybe they expect a counter attack, it's hard to say. And they have much to be concerned about. There's always the threat of an attack by say, a giant space dragon, the kind that leaves the sun every thirty days. It's a nuisance, but what would you expect from reptiles. Did I mention that my nose was on fire? That I have fifteen wild badgers living in my trousers? I'm sorry, would you prefer ferrets?" ~ Marcus

"What do you want?"
"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I'd look up at your lifeless eyes and wave like this. Can you and your associates arrange it for me, Mr. Morden?" ~ Morden and Vir

"Commander! Did you threaten to grab hold of this man by the collar and throw him out an airlock?"
"Yes I did."
"I'm shocked. Shocked and dismayed. I'd remind you that we are short on supplies here. We can't afford to take perfectly good clothing and throw it out into space. Always take the jacket off first, I've told you that before. Sorry, she meant to say: Stripped naked and thrown out an airlock. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused." Sheridan and Ivanova

"Raise your eyes and look at me."
"It's disrespectful."
"I can not have an aide who will not look up. You will be forever walking into things." ~ Dukhat and Delenn

"No, that was not Zathras, that was Zathras. There are 10 of us, all of family Zathras, each one named Zathras. Slight differences in how you pronounce. Zathraas, Zathras, Zathras.. You are seeing now?"
"There are ten of you?"
"Yes! Well, nine now." ~ Zathras and Ivanova

"Half of EarthForce wants me to celebrate your victory and give you the Metal of Honor. The other half wants you shot. As a politician, I learn to compromise. Therefore, I should give you the Metal of Honor, and then have you shot." ~ President Luchenko

"Where is my book? It is my only copy!"
"Yes, that is precisely the point. The Kha'Ri felt that if anything happened to you, the book of G'Kar would never see the light of day, so they .. liberated it."
"Liberated it?"
"We took it home. Those that read it were very moved by it and they made some copies."
"Copies?!"
"Just a few, .. for their friends. A few more, .. later few more copies."
"How many?!"
"That's hard to say, exactly. There was some confusion when it went to the printers."
"Printers?! I've only been gone for a month, Ta'Lon, there can't be that many copies floating around this quickly. How many?"
"Five or six .. hundred .. thousand."
"What?"
"I've been told that it will out-sold the book of G'Quan. .. Congratulations, citizen G'Kar. You are now a religious icon." G'Kar and Ta'lon

Sleep now. Talk about how pointless this is. Wake me up in the morning. Or don't. 'Night.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

I did not write these. I wish I had, but I didn't... however... they're so good that I memorized one of them. The original poems, for anyone who's been living under a proverbial rock for the last hundred years or so, are italic.

Hmmm?
What if Mother Goose had tendencies and propensities
toward verbosity and prolixity?

(Jack be nimble.

Jack be quick.

Jack jump over

The candlestick)

Jack becomes dexterous,
Jack becomes able to attain high velocity,
Jack forms a trajectory over the illuminating apparatus of
ozocitereous structure.

(Mary had a little lamb,
little lamb, little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb,
whose fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
and everywhere that Mary went,
the lamb was sure to go) There are more verses, but there's eighteen verses to London Bridge as well... and no one knows them. But me. Because I'm a special weirdo.

Mary was formerly the owner and proprietor of a pygmy Ovis aries,
It possessed an outer wool covering which had the characteristic
pallidness much like that found in the appearance of crystalline
precipitation,
And to each point in space that Mary would venture to,
The aforementioned Ovis aries would participate with a high degree of
certainty.

(Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said 'What a good boy am I!)

Diminutive Jack Horner
Was seated at the perpendicular conjunction of three planar surfaces,
Ingesting his baked Yuletide pastry.
He inserted his opposable digit,
And excavated a specimen of genus Prunus,
And remarked, "What a benevolent adolescent I have become!"

(Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet

Eating her curds and whey

Along came a spider

Who sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Muffet away.)

Lilliputian damsel Muffet
Was rested upon a squatty seating apparatus,
Ingesting the lacteal substances in her possession.
At this point arrived an arachnid
Which inhabited the immediate vicinity of the maiden,
And, true to the fundamental principles of stimulus and response,
arose trepidation in the damsel with sufficient efficiency so as
to induce the aforementioned maiden to change locale.

Anyway, I'm calling it Spiderweb Raindrops or Spiderweb Tears or Spiderweb Something-To-Do-With-Water and that's because of a scene I had during science class. For being so awful, science class is a great way to daydream new ideas with kind of weird technology and everything.

It's a science fiction story that focuses mostly on a team and what makes a team and what happens when someone gets in the way of that team... with loyalty from some of the people. Asheme makes a great villain because he's practically insane. But he's not insane. He's just... one step away from screaming. And. Oh. I'm enjoying this story.

But I've written most of the first day. The story is in twelve days, so I'm just calling the chapters days. And I mean, I thought it was going to be short. The first day; there's still a few scenes missing and it's over 4500 words long. And, it's the first day. I introduce a lot of characters, a bit of tension, but almost none of the war with the Old World.

The characters - the ones I've developed, anyways - Ora, Carmen, Maris, Salrev, Asheme and Erik are great. Marilee and Logan are getting there just because I've changed the ship they fly, made them twins and decided which city they grew up in. Nash and Duce are just... sort of hanging in the space between the Moon and Jupiter. Because, well, no one's ever been to Jupiter.

^.^ That was Carmen's first line. Well, no. It was Nash's first line. But is was the line that introduced Carmen. It also sets up space technology without the hyperspace technology that most space stories use. I'm enjoying some of the scenes I'm thinking of. There's this one where Ora asks Carmen what war she's fighting. And Carmen says don't be silly and everything but she can't answer Ora and I know it's been done before and everything, but Ora and Carmen have some great interractions.

And Erik's the kid who fights with Ora's all the time. And they're both the longer members of the group. So, I supposed that people will think they'll end up love interests, but Erik is so completely loyal to Asheme and he's almost goes insane during Ora's second mission (Erik's fourth), they just never get along. And then Erik runs a suicide mission that everyone tells him not to do and dies and, he's just so... Erikish. He's a special character.

Keil doesn't like him, however, so I'm wondering how that dynamic will play out in my mind. So far, this is my favorite scene from Day One:

Someone screamed. It was a horrible sound. Like... the way street-rats cried out when they were cornered by the drunken dregs. It was the way a woman cried out when she was separated from her child. It was how a trapped man screams when his life is being slowly, every so slowly, sucked away. Salrev's grip tightened. His fingers dug into my skin and pulled me onward. The screaming got closer as we walked. I scanned the hallways, looking for the awful sound. We rounded a corner and I stopped.

A man slumped against a side wall, his head between his knees. He was shaking and clutched at his hair in desperation. His screams echoed through the hallways. I stared. His uniform was the same as mine. I could feel Salrev trying to pull me on, but the Pilot felt more important. The man screamed.

“Miss Anton,” the lieutenant hissed in my ear, “we must continue.”

I refused to acknowledge him. The man huddled against the wall and no one moved to help him. Why would no one move to help him? I had seen bodies slumped against walls, bruised and broken until life had simply left them, but he was still alive and he was in pain. Why would no one help him?

There was a small noise directly beside my left ear. I jumped a little. A health worker stood beside me, a small pistol clutched in his hands. I blinked. What...? Before I could fully process the thought, the health worker leveled the gun, pointing it at the man. Somehow, before the trigger was pulled, I ended up against the wall opposite the screaming man, with Lieutenant Salrev covering my ears. But I still saw the gun recoil.

I saw the man recoil.

And I could still hear his last scream. It rung in my ears over and over and over and over as he slumped to the side.

The health worker turned to us and offered a hand, helping Lieutenant Salrev up. “Sorry kid,” said the worker, slipping the gun into his belt. “Just remember rule number twenty-six. Ignore the screamers.” He walked away.

Friday, March 18, 2011

So, Saint Patrick's Day was yesterday. I wore my green turtle earrings - because they are epic - but didn't do much more than that. The whole school seemed obsessed with it. Like with Valentine's Day, it really made me wonder why people celebrate these things?

The few people I asked said that St. Patrick's Day was a celebration of Irish heritage.

If that was the case, why does everyone seem to celebrate it when everyone is most certainly not Irish? I got invited to an "Erin" party one of seniors was having in one of the classrooms after school. I didn't attend because I wasn't feel so great and because it felt entirely and completely arbitrary, not to mention very exclusive. I mean, seriously, a name party?

St. Patrick's Day, like so many other holidays like Easter started out as Christian celebrations and have turned into secular holidays. Although, I guess Easter doesn't really count because it's still retained such an importance to Christianity. St. Patrick is remembered because he brought salvation to Ireland. I'm not sure of all the details, but that is pretty much what happened.

It just really bugs me, society and all. They place so much value on looks and appearance and this and that and not on what really, truly matters. Irish heritage. Shouldn't we have a major celebration for English heritage then? French? Dutch? Italian? But no... it's just... such a minority thing.

Minority things. I really dislike debacles revolving around minorities. Most of them are so... so... minor! I mean, there is a reason something is majority and something is a minority. Yeah, I understand we should respect and honor and be aware of the minority, but if you're not allowed to wear an American flag in a California school just because for some Mexican holiday, that's just taking things way too far. That's placing the minority above the majority and saying "Lookee here, we're doing something for the people no one pays any attention too."

The thing is, I seem to fixate on problems like that. I think about half of the people who edited Count the Rocks for me asked if there wasn't some other difference I could use besides for "black" and "white." No. The story was not about the racism between black and white, but rather something that could have been done. People just grabbed a hold of the racism and cried foul. Shouldn't we be complaining about St. Patrick's Day? Because it's so entirely Irish. But no...

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

It's been weird, in school, I haven't encountered nearly the same amount of "homeschool questions" that I thought was going to. There's been a ton, but usually rather random ones and not the full out interview that starts with "how long" going to "what time you wake up" to "pajamas" to whatever interests the questioner.

Anyway, in social studies we were filling out the study guide for our the Cold War European map quiz that we're having on Friday. Seriously, I could have taken this test weeks ago and aced it. Iceland, Ireland, Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, West Germany, Italy, East Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Albany, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Soviet Union. My class was complaining about having to do all of Europe.

Jada, the girl in front of me, asked why I was so good at geography. You know, I really, really, really hate it when people ask me to explain something about myself. It's like... an impossibility. I just answered that one of my older brothers was a whiz at geography and that I picked it up from him. She then asked if I had already studied the material that we were working through. I said kinda.

This sparked the first bout of real homeschool questions I had had in a long while. Amy, who sits next to me, asked how long each day I normally worked, what time I woke up, what a day consisted off, etc. etc. etc. Lauren, who sits in front of Amy, asked me if I would spend a day on each subject instead of doing a little each day. That was actually an original question, but then Lauren is, um, slightly, um, different from the normal populace. She's a special person in her own way.

And then during science today, I was taking with Katie, who was a homeschooler for first and second grade. She stopped homeschooling when she moved to New York, but it was weird taking to someone - who I actually get along with - who did homeschool for the first couple years. She really didn't like it, but it was an enjoyable discussion. Katie actually shares my views on vaccinations, it's incredible. The two of us are completely different but we have a ton of common view points.

It just seems to me that a lot of people who go to school have a very warped vision of homeschooling. Many homeschooling conversations usually end up along the "are you a hermit?" direction of thoughts. There's a Doctor Who quote that always, always, always makes me think of homeschooling:

"Where have you been?"
"Bit of a hermit."
"A-a hermit... with, uh; friends?"
"Hermits United. We meet up every 10 years, swap stories about caves. It's good fun. For a hermit."
~ Doctor Who, Season 3, Utopia, Professor Yana and the Doctor

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

ECONOMICALLY IS NOT A WORD! Seriously, my English teacher said "economically" about seventeen times today.

A couple of months ago, my science teacher said something was "unrelevant and irequivocal." She then proceeded to tell the whole class that those two words were antonymous. However, she did catch the antonymous mistake and switch it to synonymous, but the mixed up prefixes remained.

My Chinese teacher makes a ton of spelling mistakes, but she's from Shanghai, so it's acceptable. No one can spell February anyways.

Last week, my math teacher spelled the word "image" wrong three different times. He wrote "imagine," erased it, wrote "imagine" again, erased it, and then word "imige." A few minutes after that, we proceeded to get into a discussion as to what "dilate" means. When you shine a light directly in your eyes, they dilate, right? They get smaller. They expand when there's not enough light. That's what I thought, I'm not sure though. Anyway, the whole class got embroiled in that discussion.

My science textbook doesn't understand the meaning of a paragraph, or a comma. They had three independant clauses joined together with no punctuation. And then there was a paragraph that was about three pages long.

In a video we were watching on the Cold War during social studies today, they pronounced "lethargic" as "lee-far-gik" as opposed to "le-thar-gic."

In science today, she showed us a picture that showed the water cycle, however, there was this really big mountain right next to the ocean and it was raining on the leeward side of the mountain, not the oceanic side of the mountain. I pointed this out to my teacher. She blinked. And then the class started finding other problems with that particular photo.

I know I make a lot of mistakes with grammar and spelling and whatnot, but these were some teacher-related goofs that I just felt like sharing.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

But the thing is, I've got this really cool idea for a "short" story and I can't figure out how to write because the words aren't flowing. I can't figure out how to portray Ora's nervousness. I can't figure out how to portray how she feels when Salrev yanks her past one of the screamers. I can't figure out how to portray the sweat on her brow and the frantic, hurried pace of the fighting.

It's probably not really original, but I love my characters. Ora's the innocent one, who doesn't understand things. Salrev is the mentor, but he's nasty and stuck up and he works for the government. There's Erik, who's the depressed one. There's Marris, who would be the mentor if he didn't disappear early on in the story. Ora becomes desperate to find out where he went, but she never does, at least not until the end of the war. There's Lars, the new kid, after Ora. He's the terrified one.

They're the street-rat group, so no one really trust each other. Marris is the oldest, and he's about twenty something. No one really knows. Erik's from New York. He was caught thieving, so he got sent to a correction facility. All the pilots are orphans, criminals, or volunteers who have no idea how dangerous everything is. Ora's a volunteer. Her aunt didn't want her to go, but she insisted. She's from Quebec, I think, I'm not sure yet.

The pilots and everything are fighting because the Earth is fighting a war between the New World block and the Old World block. Africa, however, is pretty much divided into North and South. The North allied with the New World and the South stayed with Europe and Asia. Most of the land fighting takes place over North Africa while the space fighting expands up to the moon and back. There is some amount of land fighting that takes place on the moon, but not a lot.

The technology is advanced, but not true space flight. There's no hyperdrives or anything. Flying a fighter takes so much energy that most of the pilots debunk in two or three months, becoming "screamers" which are basically just insane people. There's not a lot of nukes and everything, especially not on the big cities, because that's the only rule of the war.

I just can't get this story to work. It's short, probably no longer than 30 or 40 pages, but I still can't get it to work. And it won't leave me.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Well, that's really because I haven't found any pattern to Chinese grammar. Well, nothing beyond the rudimentary who + when + what sentence order. The title 中国文 means "zhong guo wen" - middle country language. Which, well, basically it's the Chinese language.

I think, so far, my favorite Chinese word is 滑 which means "hua" which is slippery. Put it in front of 雪, "xue" which is snow, and you get skiing. 滑冰 "hua bing" which is slippery ice, and means skating. I really do enjoy this language, at least when I don't have to worry about the language. 冰淇淋 doesn't have hua in it, but it's "bingqilin" which means ice cream and all three of those characters has the radical for water. I shall explain radicals. Maybe.

The language is just fun. I mean, it's a puzzle, because there's so many different pronunciations and everything. It's enjoyable, I think.

So far, my favorite sentence in Chinese is "我有三个哥哥." Which translates to the pinyin system as "wo you san ge gege." "Ge" and "gege" do have different tonal marks, however, with the first "ge" being a down slash and the "gege" having just the level bar. The sentence translates as I (wo) have (you) three (san) measure word for people (ge) older brothers (gege). I have three older brothers. Yay me.

My family is the largest in the Chinese class. They all seem to think it's either hysterical or horrendous that I have "si ge xiong di": four measure word brothers.

Did I mention the measure words? That's one thing I never understood when I was working with the Rosetta Stone program; stuff like the fact that there's different measure words like "ge" (people), "zhe" (animals, I think), "zhang" (paper/books/etc, again, I think) and oh so many more... that's not something the Rosetta Stone format would have taught me.

Anyway, I did mention the radicals. In the character system, there's a bunch of smaller sets of strokes that have a specific meaning behind them. Three dashes running down the left side is water, and I mentioned that one, but the text-characters kinda screw it. Picture a slanted colon with an extra dot. If a character has that in it, it usually has something to do with water. Most radicals are pictographs, simply evolving from the original character, like the one for "eye." This radical, 目, started out as an actual picture of an eye and then it was flipped upright and straightened out. Now it's the radical for eye.

This stuff is fascinating!

My teacher says that the major difference between the traditional and simplified systems for characters is that the traditional system based more on pictorgraphs and is a lot more curved than the simplified system.

The character for older brother, 哥哥, has the radical for mouth in it. Four times. It's the little box thingy. My class found it hysterical when my teacher made a joke about how older brothers always like to talk a lot because they have big mouths. My Chinese class is strange. The teacher isn't so great, but it's the only class I'm actually learning something that I really couldn't learn alone, so, I enjoy it.

Oh. Oh. Oh! Bob had a movie playing and this guy was working for a Chinese restaurant that had the character for fortune on it. Except the character wasn't upside down. Because during the Chinese New Year, people hang the big character for fortune upside down because the pronunciation of the word "upside down," is the same (besides for tonal marks) with the pronunciation of the word "attend/arrive" so hanging the character for fortune upside down would symbolize that fortune is arriving. Chinese humor. Who knew?

Thursday, March 10, 2011

I'm sure scientists have poured hours of their time into finding just the right alarm clock. Look at ThinkGeek or Hammacher Schlemmer and they'll have entire pages devoted to alarm clocks. I really want that clock that lights up in binary, but that one isn't really an alarm clock. The ones Bob liked the most where the whirley gig ones that would send a flying disk into the air when the alarm went off, and then those alarms wouldn't be quiet until you fetched the disk and put it back on the clock.

I think I first started paying attention to alarm clocks – beyond admiring the Hammacher Schlemmer ones – at summer camp last year. We would talk about how Kiska had the most annoying alarm clock because it would start off slow and soft and then get louder and faster until it was just a constant blare. Most of the councils at the camp admitted to struggling to wake up to alarms that wouldn't also wake their campers up. One of the great things about being one of the oldest at the camp; the councilors told us things like that.

On the canoe trip I went on, Bobbi woke the other girls up with a blow-horn. I had already exited our tent and was therefore saved. They refused to talk to her for the rest of the morning. Rusty's alarm clock sang “rise and shine and give God the glory, glory...” It was way to chipper for most people. Tika's just beeped. I found that incredibly irrating that someone as wonderful and creative as she was would have an alarm clock that simply beeped. It was too normal! Some of the councilors would even prank the alarms of the division directors and other staff. Great fun. Skuttle's alarm clock, apparently, quaked like a duck. No one was able to verify that, as she slept out in the staff cabins and there was no way they'd let us sneak up there before her alarm went off.

Ah. Cedarbrook.

I eventually decided that the best alarm clocks work like Kiska's, when they start off slowly and then work up to a faster and much louder tone. It has to be almost impossible to sleep to, so a little offbeat, but not jarringly so, and not that loud. It takes a lot to get right, but it is possible, because I've found the perfect song for it. Song. And I don't even listen to music.

Anyway, there's this band. And this band is called OwlCity. And it's sung by this guy. And that guy's name is Adam Young. And I like the word “and.” And I'm being rather repetitive here... And there's this song. And this song is entitled “Hello Seattle.” And there's this remix of that song. And this remix is entitled “Hello Seattle (Remix).”

What a shocker.

The remix of Hello Seattle is simply the perfect song to wake up to. It starts off really slow and soft and then just gradually gets louder and louder until the words come, very, very, very soft and then it jumps to loud music again, with no words, and then goes down to a smoother balance between words and music and I find it great. I think the only words of the whole 4 minutes are “hello Seattle,” but when all you're doing is waking up, it works really well.

I've gotten a flesh reaction, however, because I've woken up to that song so much that when my iPod is on shuffle and that song comes up, there's the I've-got-to-go-to-school reaction, which is kind of annoying. And when I get home from school and turn my iPod on, I know exactly how long it took me to roll out of bed, simply by knowing which place in the crescendo the song is at. Is that at all insane?

We're doing this research paper in social studies and while we were supposed to be picking our topics, I requested my teacher suggest a very difficult topic. That's how I ended up having to write a five to six page paper on the economic problems of the EU.

We were in the library at school today (the LMC), doing research on the computers in the backroom. I had such a migraine. It was awful. And of course, this is a group of regular students, non-enriched, who have absolutely no wish to be working on that research paper at the time. They were so loud! I wadded up two pieces of paper and stuck them in my ears to try and keep the noise down.

I asked my teacher how long she thought I'd last until I cracked and did something really, really, really stupid. At least I made it through the class. I might not be that lucky tomorrow. Yes, social studies was definitely a long class today. I really, very strongly dislike the LMC. Every time I go there, I get a headache. Maybe it's got something to do with the rooms or whatever, but I can't go to the LMC without a migraine, it's awful.

The thing is, my teacher's making us print our sources so she knows we're not plagiarizing and include those sources with our paper. It's a nightmare, I've never done that. I don't think in that way. I accumulate the information and then go back and find the specifics; pile that headache on top of the first one.

And, to top off the simply lovely day I'm having right now, I've got a bucket load of homework, mostly research for that paper on the economic problems of the pigs of the eu, English, IED, science and a ton of Chinese. On top of that, I got my score for the AMC 10 back today and it was rather depressing. I got below average on all accounts. Below average. One of the feelings I strongly dislike is being subpar in an area in which I know I can succeed and do better. Gr. I got a 61.5 out of a possible 150 points. 61.5!

I've complained about three things, so I'll say right now that I'm grateful for sleep, I'm grateful for pretzels, and I'm grateful for stuff to drink. There, now I've been thankful as many times as I complained. >.> Kinda. At least I get to skip Brit Lit next year, seeing as I already took it. The process was almost painless, really. I'm taking Creative Writing and problem Contemporary Literature and this'll give me space to take another half year elective like psychology, which I'm excited about. Thankfulness. Yay.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

I seem to be obsessed with this spice. I don't know why. It's probably the name. “Paprika” is almost as epic as “skiing” or “vacuum.”

I just tasted plain paprika and I think Blue's Clues got it right. It tastes like a mixture of salt and pepper with a smidgen of sugar and that really hot spice that starts with a c and I've never managed to spell. Cayenne. Right. There, I spelled it.

Paprika is made from the grinding of dried fruits of Capsicum annumn. Capisicum annumn is a domesticated species of the plant genus Capsicum native to southern North America and northern South America. The three species C. annuum, C. frutescens and C. chinese all evolved from a single common ancestor located somewhere in the northwest Brazil - Columia area. This species is the most common and extensively cultivated of the five domesticated capiscums (Wiki).

A.k.a, the pepper.

Wait a second. -rereads the article- Peppers are a fruit?! I had totally not connected with that before. I mean, tomatoes, sure. Everyone knows tomatoes are a fruit, but I don't see peppers as fruit; they're so... vegetable. We eat them with meat, onions, mushrooms, alone, salads, etc. etc. etc. but as fruit? They get crushed into spices like cayenne and paprika, and you don't often see many fruits turned into spices other than lemon and various citrus jests...

Peppers grow best in warm and dry climates, but they can survive almost anywhere. Their color ranges from from red to purple on the color scheme, but I have yet to see a blue colored pepper. All the other colors, I've eaten. The purple once aren't so great. Apparently, what makes chili peppers hot is this chemical capsaicin that causes a burning sensation in your mouth; a sensation responsible for the my-mouth-is-on-fire reaction!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Basically, how that class works is Mr. H gives us an assignment and we all get started on said assignment. I finish assignment three days ahead of schedule. I then hand in the assignment on time while Mr. H pushes the due date back a day, usually due to extenuating circumstances. Some of that is exaggeration, but that's how it feels like that class goes.

I had a glorified study hall today, so I decided I'd make something in Inventor, the software with which we've been working. I started trying to make a car, but that wasn't really successful... And so I drew a circle. And then I drew a vertical line through the center of the circle. And then I put a rectangle below the circle. And that's pretty much how I started the gingerbread man.

It took me a little while to get the legs and arms right because I dimensioned them from the center line and then had to go back and dimension them from the original rectangle and circle because I needed to delete that original center line. Anyway, it took me a little while to get the feet to like right; the arms still don't because I cut to much off of the hand, so it's not circular enough.

Once I got the basic outline for the feet, hands and body out, I went and put in a neck and filleted all the abrupt corners, like the arm pits and the hip joints, so now those are all nice and curvy. Meanwhile, I was helping N and R try and get their work done because they had missed a few days, but still. I cackled quite a bit over my little gingerbread name. He doesn't have a name, I'm not going to name him until I finish him.

Monday, March 7, 2011

I'm going to ask two questions. Just two, and then I'm going to answer/rant about them for the next few minutes you're reading this. You're welcome to go do something else. This is probably a rather pointless activity.

1) If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Seriously, I hate this questions. My first response is usually, does it have to be in the world? Because at present, my answer would either be: Narnia, during the reign of High King Peter; the TARDIS, while the Tenth Doctor has it; Babylon 5 station, any time during the 2-5 seasons; Mount Olympus, where all the Greek gods live; Oz; or in the Lion King.

My next question would tend to be, does it have to be in this time period? If not, I would probably want to go back to ancient Greece or Roman. But more Roman, about 60 AD or something. Travel with Paul, see Philippe in person and hope I can one day stop spelling the Philippines/Philippians wrong. Why do both of those spellings exist? Or I'd go into the future, just to see what it looks like, if we really do make it into the stars. It would be interested to watch WWII take place, never getting involved or anything, but I think it would be fascinating. Battles fascinate me. One thing I wish history did more of was study battles and tactics and logistics and armies.

If it has to be in this world, in this time period, I would answer some town in Virginia. And then people ask me which town. And then I say I don't know. And then they look at me funny. They never ask why, however. I think people get so used to be they assume there's a really strange answer for something. Sometimes, I feel I'm my school's personal Luna Lovegood.

2) If you could have dinner with ten people, dead or alive, who would they be?

My answer to this questions chances all the time. I ask this question a lot. It's a good topic to discuss. People's heroes and friends and whatnot tend to give a very interesting insight into their personality.

Everyone on that list is a writer besides for Adam Young and I suppose Benjamin Franklin. So I'll narrow the criteria to fictional writing. And even then, Benjamin Franklin might fit. So I'll narrow the criteria to fictional writer who've I've read and loved.

Although, technically, I haven't read anything written by Straczynski. I've just watched his TV show. Which is like a novel. A novel for television. That's how epic and suspenseful the end of each episode would be if you didn't know what was coming. I do believe I watched 30 hours of that show in just one extended weekend. >.>

All of those guys are epic.

The harder aspect of this question to answer is if you have to answer for fictional characters. Seriously, it's like, impossible.

Why does no one ever stop to wonder how blood type could effect vampires? What if vampires could only suck a certain type of blood? What if they would die if they made a mistake? What if? What if? What if? Why do people only make them sparkle, not answer any of the interesting questions?

How dangerous would a wolf be if it turned human during the full moon?

What would happen if you mated an orc and an elf?

In the evil to good spectrum of light to dark, where does pink fit it? Or yellow, for that matter? Or blue, or green? What happens when you tint evil a different color?

What really would happen if you crossed elephants and kangaroos? Seriously, not the “black holes all over Australia” thing. Marsupial pachyderms?

If plants could see, what would a thistle sound like? Would it be fingernails on a chalk board, or the sweetest sound in the world?

What do dwarf women look like????!???!?!?!?!?!

Why is it that Star Trek and even Star Wars and other science fiction shows seem to see space as two dimensional? I mean, they sector things off into quadrants. “It's gonna take us 72 years to get back from Gamma Quadrant to Delta Quadrant. Oh no!” Seriously, you can't sector something that so purely three dimensional as space off into quadrants.

Why is the end of the world never the end? Why is it that life always lives to see the end and to start rebuilding? Apocalypse stuff is so over used.

If my charries were real, what chaos would ensue? Well, Justin Bieber would have been dropped from the Eiffel Tower a couple of months ago, sorry, Justin, that's just the way things are. Keil would probably be wanted by all the governments of the world for random acts of weirdness. Flora would wreck havoc every where she went. And Stuffz, we-ell, seeing as he's the personification of all evil, I suppose he does exist.

Here's a big question, why did I ever name the personification of all evil, Stuffz?

If ogres are like onions, doesn't that mean we should be comparing them to Aslan's country, which is a comparison for Heaven and... yeah... I think I'm stopping this question here.

What is the fourth dimension?

What would happen if you gave Jack the Ripper four tactical nukes?

What would happen if you gave Donald Duck four tactical nukes?

What would happen if Harry Potter had four tactical nukes? Hm... maybe a much less angst-filled novel with a lot more action and good fun adventure in it. Then, of course, he'd probably end up blowing himself up due to a miscast spell because Hermione wasn't there to stop him...

What would happen if Percy Jackson had four tactical nukes? Well... Bye bye Smelly Gabe. Bye bye Kronos. Bye bye Luke. Why does no one ever use nukes?

What would happen if you let OYANers run the government? … No. No. NO! STOP THIS TRAIN OF THOUGHT!!!! I'm not going there! No! It. Would. Be. Disastrous. Sure, we all know how many states are in our country, but, -hyperventilates- that would be a bad day. I mean, we'd probably make handshakes illegal and enforce that everyone great each other with a glomp! Oh no. >.> I should not have even brought this up.

What happens when you let me have access to my mind when I probably should be doing something else right now. MWUAHAHAHA!

What would happen if I actually stayed on topic for once in my life? Actually, I don't think that's ever going to happen. So I think I'd die.

If flying really was just throwing yourself at the ground and missing, wouldn't it be epic?

What would happen if Shel Silverstein got elected president?

What would happen if Dr. Suess got elected president? For some reason, I'm getting the idea that we would have a lot more randomness and a lot less problems.

Before I start, I just want the world to know that I should never, ever, be allowed to be in charge of dinner. I can't even watch a roast for forty-five minutes without forgetting it and letting it sit in the oven for two and an half hours. Nor should you rely on me for a judgment of how large a car is. Anyway:

More quotes, no particular order, just ones I enjoy.

1.

“Mama, why did Augusta Maine Concord Massachusetts?”

I don't know the name of the kid who asked it, but seriously, say it aloud. I mean, Massachusetts comes right after Maine in the alphabetical lists and when you're listing all the capitals...

2.

“It hung in the air the way bricks don't.”

Douglas Adams,The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Isn't Adams just amazing? This is one of my favorite quotes of his. It's just so... random...

3.

“To boldly split infinitives that no man has split before.”

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

4.

“My sisters were soon busy with their sewing and their embroidering, their spinning and their gossiping, though what they found to talk about so endlessly when they went nowhere and saw no one was beyond my comprehension.”

Barbara Cohen, Seven Daughters and Seven Sons

I love the entire book, but that's probably my favorite quote. It's just so... epic. And it puts spins on common things in that time period of literature that's just great. And I see myself in Buran, a lot.

5.

“My father's vizier had to speak to me three times to get my attention. At least, so he told me, with some asperity. Since I did not hear him the first two times, I would not otherwise have known.”

Barbara Cohen, Seven Daughters and Seven Sons

Again, revel in the epicness.

6.

Take “The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!” and continue to quote the rest of the book until, “'Hi there, Alice,' T.R. Wexler said. 'Ready for a game of chess?'”

Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game

This most epic. The most awesome. Simply the best little mystery book that will ever be written. Read it. Because it is amazingly epic. I've read it about sixteen times and every time I reread it, I learn something new. Turtle is simply one of the greatest characters in fiction, as is Sandy. And, great book.

I really should not be allowed near food. I ruin it.

7.

“If you only think outside the box, you're limited yourself to 3D.”

My Dad.

I know I've shared this before, but I still love it.

8.

“Think globally, act locoly.”

My Dad.

Look closely.

9.

“89% of all statistics are made up on the spot!”

Somebody...

The next one, well... I don't think any Biden lovers (do those people exist? >.>) are reading this, so I have no qualms...

10.

“...a three letter word. Jobs! J-O-B-S! Jobs!”

Joe Biden.

As a friend of mine is so apt to say, Σημείο και γέλιου, which basically means, point and laugh.

11.

“Touch down Philadelphia!”

Of course... this was in a Superbowl game, played by Arizona andPittsburgh.